I have no idea what’s been going on in webcomics because of work issues; long story short, yesterday was an absolute horrorshow that kept me isolated from life¹. Randy Milholland could have gone on a naked bear hunt on the show floor of the Toronto Fan Expo and I wouldn’t have heard about it. So I’m writing off anything that happened Sunday or Monday, and making a real quick survey before I have to deal with the remainder of this gig and I see….

New, mysterious artist(s) at The Trenches replacing Mary Cagle? Robert Khoo acting all mysterious? It’s Tuesday, all right. Theories as to the mysterious new contributor’s identity in the comments, at least until Khoo decides to let us know. Probably an announcement will be made at PAX Prime this weekend or something, so it shouldn’t be long.

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¹ I was on-site at my client from 6:30am to 6:10pm, during which time I did not see the sun; I didn’t get a break until 1:30pm and I had a total of 25 minutes in which to eat (at the mysteriously-empty company cafeteria, which managed to give me a low-grade case of food poisoning). We’re now at least two hours behind in a two-day class because the technical environment was not what I was promised, and we don’t start until 1:00pm today just because. I’ve spent most of the time since end of class yesterday either sleeping or wishing I had some Judge Harlan’s Parts Unknown Tonic and flour water. This entire thing is sass in the main and I am ready to tear off somebody’s entire middle.

In that the fundamentally unreasonable task in front of me ramped all the way up to You want me to do what? then down to Fine, but when I kick this in its ass you’d best remember my name and from there to I no longer feel the need to cut those responsible. We’ll see how well this mood lasts on Monday.

• In the meantime, the recurring theme today is Webcomics That Don’t Update Often Are Updating Hooray. Achewood is now three-for-three on weekly updates, although it’s continuing Small Times With Ray and Beef instead of the tantalizing search for Ray, Who Sprang This Place (Rehab)¹. Meanwhile, Jeffrey Rowland’s absolutely-true diary of things that actually happen to him shows that Doctor Monkey ain’t no fool, and Aaron Diaz² drops a new Dresden Codak that combines nearly all of his interests: neo-futurist Art Deco, menace, and the world beneath the surface. The end effect is if Michael Whelan cut some primo cyberpunk with The Silmarillion and mainlined a hallucination of Gondolin in the technological age.
• Looking backwards, with a purpose: Raina Telgemeier was one of many people that noted that a certain Japanese school district has removed the classic manga Barefoot Gen — which depicts the effects and aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing, and has long been used to teach that part of Japanese history — from its school libraries. The logic behind the removal is that the manga showing wartime atrocities by Japanese soldiers would lead to young people being aware of the fact that Japanese soldiers committed wartime atrocities. Ultra-nationalists! They’re so sensitive.

  Anyway, lots of people have gone beyond noting and into decrying this move, but only Telgemeier had the foresight (more than a decade ago!) to create a comic about the effect that Barefoot Gen had on her as a young reader. Beginnings isn’t cute, or funny, but it’s honest and a little painful and nowhere near as raw (and depressing, but a useful kind of depression that shows you still have empathy and the ability to learn and resolve not to repeat the mistakes of past generations) as Barefoot Gen or, say, Grave of the Fireflies³.

  Telgemeier’s linking of Beginnings got noticed, including by a gentleman in Japan who translated it so his daughter could read it. That translation has picked up steam, leading to a pretty lengthy story about Beginnings and Raina-san in today’s papers. Congratulations to both Telgemeier and her translator, @unpocketable on Twitter, for responding to stupidity with art.

• Looking fowards, with paper cut-outs: if you’re in the LA area on Tuesday (I won’t be), David Malki ! would like you to know that although his summer has been a non-stop whirl of conventions, and Kickstarter reward production and book launches and associated promotions, he is still hitting the creativity on all cylinders. Specifically, a new animated Wondermark short will debut in Santa Monica at 8:00pm, as part of a video showcase called The Web Show Show at the Westside Comedy Theater. A sneak peek of the short (which features puppets, but not the creepy kind) may be seen via Vine.

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¹ Although bonus points to Chris Onstad for delivering up a deep cut first hinted at during Molly and Beef’s rehearsal dinner some five years ago.

² Martial-arts expert and pixelbender extraordinaire.

³ Nothing is as depressing as Grave of the Fireflies, which is at the top of my list of amazing art that I will never willingly consume again.

Okay, got something dumped on me that’s likely going to disrupt posting for most of the next week; tomorrow’s looking 50/50, Monday is probably out entirely, Tuesday is reasonably likely, and Wednesday most likely a write-off. Sorry about that, hit me up with a beer sometime and I’ll tell you about how amazingly entitled and unreasonable a very, very large multinational corporation is being, merely because they have more money than God¹.

In the meantime: new comic from Jeffrey Rowland! Let the rejoicing commence!

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¹ Let’s just say it’ll involve a project that was decided upon this morning, has to launch on Monday, will involve weird hours, and flights to a place that isn’t very convenient to fly to/from. Wheee.We care, Jeffrey! We care SO HARD.

I first met Matt Lubchansky at NYCC a couple years ago via the kind introduction of one Jon Rosenberg¹ and have followed the various comics that he produces since. Much as I like the laugh-chuckles of Please Listen To Me, I find that his collaborations are even better and he’s got a doozy of a collaboration with Mallory Ortberg today. I wasn’t familiar with The Toast, where said collaboration is running today, so thanks to Hey Pais’s Sara McHenry for the pointer.

With that buildup concluded, please go check out Tips For Improving Street Harassment because it’s really smart, really funny, and makes you wistfully sigh If only.

• To be honest, I don’t check in on Lubchansky as often as I should; something about the number of hours in the day. Likewise, I also don’t check in on the many, many comics projects of John Troutman as often as I should, but this time I think we can attribute it to the sheer amount of output, given that he’s working at least two and a half comics presently and (if I have my sums correct) has done at least a half dozen others in the past.

  That and a half comic would be Lit Brick, which updates “whenever”; it’s out of this comic about literature that Troutman has spun a story of Carol, twin sister of Jesus². Or rather, is looking to spin that story, provided it gets Kickstarted; as mentioned in part one of our Tavis Maiden interview, pre-funding webcomics is becoming a thing, although you’d be hard pressed to find a creator with a longer track record than Troutman.

• Speaking of Kickstarts, it appears to be doll season in the crowdfunding corners of comicdom. On the cute and cuddly side, you’ve got Jennie Breeden looking to plushify her Devil Girl alter-ego. Right now she’s funded plus a bit with most of a month to go but if the campaign hits a 200% funding level, it will unlock a matching Angel Girl plush; this means that you can act out your own crises of conscience with little Jennies acting as your personal shoulder devil/angel.
• On the holy crap is that gorgeous side, longtime creator Jill Thompson is looking to translate her Scary Godmother character (star of comics, books, and the occasional animated special) into a fully-articulated fashion doll. You know how sometimes things that are clearly toys have labels that state This is totally not a toy it’s an adult collectible not intended for kids because it is soooo adult really because it’s got small parts that could cause choking?

  Yeah, this isn’t that, this damn well is an exemplar of dollmakers craft, the sort that requires US$40,000 steel molds, custom textiles, custom accessory fabrication, and suchlike. But whoo boy, is it pretty. It’s an ambitious project, one that will require US$150,000 to come to fruition; about a third of the way through the funding period, it’s about 35% funded, so that’s good so far. It’s definitely not a general-audience, impulse-click kind of thing, so signal-boosting is probably not going to make a huge difference.

  But one thing might: check out Thompson’s profile on Kickstarter; unlike a lot of people who come to crowdfunding for the first time when they are looking for cash Thompson backed fifty projects before launching her first. Anybody wondering is she was high-balling her project requirements or trying for an easy payday, her history of backing creative projects in others would suggest otherwise.

• I can’t finish this post without some connection to Jim Zub³, so let me cast your memory back to last month when Mr Zub was kind enough to talk to me about current and future projects and in particular how he called out his Skullkickers collaborator Edwin Huang for some praise. Huang’s work has been getting widely noticed and he’s getting to be in demand, so what better time to put out an art book focusing on his style and character designs?

  The Rogues Gallery is up at Kickstarter and the fact that it’s cleared goal means that it’s functionally up for pre-order at this point; going higher on the total funds will mean improvements like more guest artists and fancy gloss on the cover, so if you like Huang’s work, now’s the time to make the book better. And seriously, 100+ page full-color hardcover art book for as little as US$25? Bargain of the year.

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¹ Who, as a reminder, owns my soul and keeps it in his wallet. Not my first choice of soul repository, not when there are nice temperature- and humidity-controlled boxes for valuables available, maybe resting on a nice mantelpiece, but I guess that’s the lesson here. You sells your soul for a dollar, you takes your chances that it’ll get sat and/or farted on daily.

² Yep, that Jesus; this particular comic chosen because What’s up, Lamb of Hosts? will never not be hilarious to me.

³ I, uh, may have signed a document to that effect.

Welcome back to Part Two of our talk with Tavis Maiden; yesterday we talked about his upcoming project, Tenko King, and how Kickstarter fit into his launch plans. Today we’ll be discussing how most people came to know him and his work, Strip Search, the nature of being around creative people, and how facial hair is critical to marital stability.

(more…)

One of the more gratifying aspects of Strip Search has been watching a pretty significant explosion of creativity from the Artists; while they surely would have continued on their individual trajectories of comic-making, that period of time when they were cooped up together in a luxury mansion and able to resonate off each other has produced a lot of interesting work, not all of it seen yet. So when Tavis Maiden offered to talk to me about his plans for his next comics project, I was happy to do so.

The back-and-forth that we had was so extensive, I’ve had to split it into two parts. Today, Maiden talks about how being a father has influenced the forthcoming Tenko King, what he wants to achieve with it, and his thoughts on Kickstarter.

(more…)

Friday afternoon, hooray. Here are some places you may want to go or things that you may want to pay attention to.

• “William Tallman”¹ has announced some changes at Reptilis Rex², which should result in a bolder, more experimental strip:
  

  [T]he next few weeks will see some changes in Reptilis Rex. Firstly, the schedule will be changing from “Monday –- Thursday” to “Sporadic!” I added the exclamation point in there to soften the blow. Did it work? Hooray!!!! Part of the reason for this is because my family is going to be growing by one in the next few months, and I know that, for a while at least, time will be a commodity I simply don’t have enough of. Like money, or self esteem! Secondly, (and this is the stretching legs part), I wanted to try out a larger format, and that means more work, which means not-so-daily updates. But it is my hope that the expanded format will allow me to tell bigger, better stories. My goal is to update at least twice a week with double-sized strips …

  We at Fleen dig Reptilis Rex big time, and getting the story in bigger (albeit less frequent) chunks should allow “Tallman” some interesting storytelling possibilities. Now if only he hadn’t ended up such a terrible cliffhanger today, with Snive (or “Robert” as he prefers to be called when in mammal drag, but I think he looks more like a “Greg”), coming to a crisis point. He’s been on the verge of breaking away from Krel for some time, and he may have finally achieved that in the worst possible way. Sure, Krel on the surface is an impotent, incompetent, self-important bully, but he used to be a hated dictator with power and perhaps a taste for genocide. How he might react to Snive’s anger is … terrifying, actually.

• New Achewood, second in the space of a week. It’s a flashback to the Small Times of Ray and Beef, but I am cautiously optimistic.
• Ignatz Award nominations out, with the most indy-oriented wing of comics coming together to honor its own (as is not uncommon with the Ignatzen, there is little to no overlap with the other major awards). Good luck to all the nominees, especially those for Outstanding Online Comic: Annie Szabla, Ken Dahl & Gabby Schulz, Sam Alden, Gabrielle Bell, and Jillian Tamaki. The Ignatz Awards will be handed out at SPX next month.
• Freelancers! Want to help make it harder for the bozos who (inadvertently) contribute to the content of For Exposure? Answer some questions for Katie Lane of Work Made For Hire and you can help set the expectation that your work is worth money:”
  

  If you freelance will you take a moment and help fill out this sheet on what your rates are? http://bit.ly/14Ex5QX

  I want to use it as a resource for people who might ask for free work. They can look at the sheet & realize, “Oh! I can afford that.”

  Or, alternatively, “Oh, I didn’t realize I was asking for $3000 worth of work!”

  My modest suggestion? Take the free out of freelance. It may sound silly the first thousand times people call themselves feelancers, but the idea that there’s a fee associated with your effort is a notion worth sounding silly for.

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¹ Who, as my previous research has conclusively proved, is actually David Willis.

² And goodness, has it really been running for 18 months and I’ve neglected to add it to the blogroll over yonder to the right? Time to fix that.

So there was a tweet earlier today from Oni Press supremo James Lucas Jones to the effect that :01 Books associate marketing manager Gina Gagliano is the absolute best, to which I responded This is mathematically provable. Before I had a chance to crunch the numbers, Ms Gagliano obviated any need for me to do so, as today’s mail brought review copies of Derek Kirk Kim [Edit to add: and Les McClaine]’s Tune: Still Life and Paul Pope’s Battling Boy.

But that’s not all, because she also sent along a matted print of Battling Boy and a T-Rex, to which I can only say, Thanks Gina, and sorry T-Rex, you are no longer the awesomest dinosaur in the world of comics. It’s gonna take some time to savor these books, so look for reviews of Battling Boy and Tune: Still Life in the coming weeks.

• Speaking of the twitters, does everybody remember about a month back, when some Scandinavian webcomics types hit the road for a casual drive to Mongolia? By the next day they were hanging in the vicinity of Prague; in the four weeks since the occasional tweet and approximate location update on their progress map assured us they were still alive and unconsumed by feral animals, although details were scarce on the blog. There were four or five days of updates through to about Romania, then a jump forward to 28 July in Uzbekistan, then nothing for two weeks.

  Last night (around 8:30pm GMT-4) however, the tweetstorm began:

  http://fms.ws/DPLFh Ulanbataar?

  The position map actually put them on the outskirts of Ulanbataar, Mongolia’s capital. Some eleven hours later:

  Finally made it to Ulaanbataar!!! Boom! First shower since Russia!

  Finish line kit, we f’ing made it!! Now, three days of fun in UN, and handing in the car tomorrow :)… instagram.com/p/dCHlYXEN96/

  We had to tow the UNO the last 350k, and recharge the battery every 40 minutes. Adventure!!… instagram.com/p/dCH9PMkN-e/

  Amazing camp has been had, waking up with this view…. najs. #teamventure #mongolrally instagram.com/p/dCIKcZkN-m/

  Finish line steak! :D @ Blue Sky Tower instagram.com/p/dCIjuYEN–/

  Finish line champagne. #mongolrally #teamventure #abataarworld instagram.com/p/dCQ7BYkN4F/

  That was followed by a posting of the first videos from the trip, and presumably a hearty period of sleep. Congratulations to the members of Team Venture for the safe conclusion of their adventure, along with the hope that they picked up some good drinking stories and maybe an interesting scar or two.

  Expect to hear more details about the adventures had along the way, and the wagers on who the next webcomics-related team will be to brave the Mongol Rally starts … now! I’m calling dibs on a team made up of Jon Rosenberg, Paul Southworth, and any other webcomickers with three small children, just for the relative opportunity to catch up on sleep that bribing ex-Soviet border guards and dodging bears would offer.

• For those looking for a comics-related adventure that involves slightly less death defiance, may I recommend Columbus, Ohio in November? The triennial Festival of Cartoon Art¹ will by coincidence be occurring about the same time as the grand opening of a new facility at the Festival’s home, the Billy Ireland Carton Library and Museum at Ohio State University.

  As a result, this year’s iteration of the FCA should be one of the best in memory, with a murderer’s row of speaking talent, an impressive-as-all-hell program schedule, and a registration cost of seventy-five bucks. Considering that registration is capped in range of hundreds², not tens of thousands, if you attend you’ll be in immediate proximity to some of the greatest creators and commenters on comics alive.

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¹ The last occurrence of which featured Dave Kellett’s address on the changing nature of comics and a stack of interviews that eventually made it into STRIPPED. Which, why look, will be screened for FCA attendees.

² Specifically, 275. At any major comics convention, there are more than 275 Homestucks waiting in line to get Andrew Hussie’s autograph.

Lagies and jenglefens, I have at long last my copy of To Be Or Not To Be A Chooseable-Path Adventure by Ryan North, William Shakespeare, and YOU (hereafter TBoNTB). While I understand that it is necessary that somebody be the last to have their book go in the mail (especially when there are more than 14,000 books to be sent), but given that shipping started a month ago I’ve been quietly getting more and more desperate for my copy.

I am just saying, had I opted to buy a copy of TBoNTB in San Diego, I could have gotten it signed by Brandon Bird, Tony Cliff, Evan Dahm, Lar DeSouza, Aaron Diaz, Becky Dreistadt, Meredith Gran, Christopher Hastings, Tyson Hesse¹, Mike Holmes, Andrew Hussie, Matthew Inman, Dave Kellett, Kazu Kibuishi, Braden Lamb, Sam Logan, David Malki !, Dylan Meconis, Carly Monardo, Ethan Nicolle, Shelli Paroline, Jon Rosenberg, Jeffrey Rowland, Andy Runton, Kris Straub, Zach Weinersmith, and Jim Zub, which would have been a modest headstart considering there are more than 40 other artists who contributed. But I didn’t and now I have years of artist-chasing to get the entire thing signed and that is okay Ryan we cool we can still be pals.

Instead of dwelling on it, I riffled the pages to a random story end illustration (by Faith Erin Hicks on page 582) and it is now my goal to read through TBoNTB however many times it takes to end up on that page. Spoiler alert, it features Ophelia doing something awesome but does not require her to stab hell of dudes. I also expect to find the book even more delightful than I did last year when Ryan North asked me to proof a not-quite-complete version of TBoNTB.

Oh, and according to the copyright page up front (I’m the guy that reads the copyright page), somewhere in TBoNTB will be found the lyrics to Rapper’s Delight by The Sugarhill Gang which I note came out in 1979 which means that Ryan North has never lived in a world without Rapper’s Delight. I think this is the exact situation that Willie Shakes was describing when he wrote O, brave new world that has such tight rhymes in’t!.

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¹ Who also illustrated the copy of Poor Yorick which I also received.

Chris Sims (who I had the distinct pleasure of meeting in San Diego this year, it was a genuine pleasure to finally make his acquaintance even if we do disagree on FilmCritHulk), a man that makes comics, writes about comics, is called upon as an expert witness on comics, and loves comics in ways that you can scarce comprehend, has been playing with a birthday gift. But do his varied visual vignettes veritably find validation as comics¹?

The unimpeachable reference on the topic, Understanding Comics, might seem to imply that the answer is no, insofar as the somewhat wordy definition that Young Scott McCloud settles on is juxtaposed pictorial and other images in deliberate sequence, and these goofs from Sims aren’t juxtaposed and we all know what that means: not comics².

But you know what? I would argue that these are not five¹ distinct single-panel comics, but instead individual panels that represent Batman and Robin climbing a very, very tall building, encountering new people at windows every third floor or so. Comics! Even when he’s just playing with his new toy, Sims can’t help but make comics.

Yeah, yeah, they can’t all be 800 words on the nature of creativity, sometimes they’re just about what amuses the crap out of me today, which often as not takes the form of an amazing coincidence³.

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¹ At the time I wrote this, Sims had produced five window gags; there may well be more since then.

² Could be worse though — it might be juxtaposed and feature the most miserablist characters ever to grace the form, but as Sims has another two weeks before he has to dig back down into the Funky/Cranky-verse, we’ll let him have his happy times without bringing them up.

³ From Randall Munroe’s excellent what if?, today taking on the topic of orbital speed and Australian Scottish pop songs.
Edit to add: Many thanks to Fleen’s onetime resident Australian and Killer Robotics Expert for pointing out our error.